"Rape is without doubt deserving of serious punishment; but in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public, it does not compare with murder, which does involve the unjustified taking of human life. Although it may be accompanied by another crime, rape, by definition, does not include the death of or even the serious injury to another person. [n13] The murderer kills; the rapist, if no more than that, does not. Life is over for the victim of the murderer; for the rape victim, life may not be nearly so happy as it was, but it is not over, and normally is not beyond repair. We have the abiding conviction that the death penalty, which "is unique in its severity and irrevocability," Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. at 187, is an excessive penalty for the rapist who, as such, does not take human life."

[As if rape isn't all but physical murder, even though victims are often directly physically murdered by their rapists or indirectly physically murdered via suicide. Ok then 🙄.]

"MR. JUSTICE POWELL concluded that death is disproportionate punishment for the crime of raping an adult woman where, as here, the crime was not committed with excessive brutality and the victim [16-year-old Elnita Carter] did not sustain serious or lasting injury. P. 601"

By the way, White and Powell set the precedent for the horrid and racist conclusion in "Kennedy v. Louisiana". Also by the way, Carter was White and thus was evidence against Patrick Kennedy's argument.

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

I maintain that "Coker" (1977) needs to be overturned. After all, being in support of capital punishment for rape is being pro life. As I chimed in on the original post, and then replied to the friend of the friend (names omitted):

I myself am pro life, and I guarantee that rape would happen less were "Coker" (1977) overturned. An overturn would effect an automatic overturning of "Kennedy" (2008), by the way, and I say that rapists should face the possibility of capital punishments since they've all but left their victims physically dead. Of course, the rapists who also physically murder their victims (including by effecting victims' deaths due to STDs, suicides, and fatal injuries besides STDs) also ought to face the possibility of capital punishments.

I don't want to see rapists be able to take lives anymore, and I don't advocate capital punishment for rapists lightly. In my own families' cases:

A cousin of my mom was gang raped in college.

I'm pretty sure that one of her sisters was raped either by a priest before she was a teen or even by Father Maskell himself (Mom denies the possibility since my aunt apparently defended him, though my grandmother I don't deny it—I even told Mom that she could've been Stockholmed,) That aunt, by the way, died nine years and a week ago due to alcoholism that onset when she was 13 (She was born in November 1951 and was the first graduate of Keough, which opened in 1965.). She also told my sister that she liked Jesus, but not the Church. Looking back and even right after she died, I knew that (when I saw the pictures at the funeral home) she was a pretty-enough young girl for perverted priests to want to target her.

A cousin of my dad (Ziggy Churnetski) participated in a gang rape in the 1920s (and he was sadly in prison for only five years and had to pay a fine of only $500. He even eventually married, and I have no idea whether his wife was his victim.)

Another cousin of my dad raped someone else and murdered another person. (I wish that his victim's sister, Lana Wood, would come out with it, by the way—as I've said, there's something in that Danilovich water, and I should've figured that rape wouldn't escape our side of the family. Ziggy was Great-Granddad's once-removed cousin.)

In short, I've heard about and seen what rapists can do to people.

I also don't find abortion acceptable in any case (though I used to find abortion acceptable in cases of rape and incest—God decided that my being fully pro life would take my now-ex younger stepsister, of all people, pointing out to me that abortion would be an unfair punishment to the baby, and she wasn't exactly the best stepsister in the world). In fact, if for nothing else, keeping a rape-conceived baby might be a practical measure in terms of getting a DNA sample from him or her to figure out or confirm who raped his or her mother. Besides, there are many couples whom want to adopt children; and my mom's cousin's husband ended up adopting her child when they as a couple could not have children.

(By the way, I hope that my now-ex stepsisters can see that my sister and I weren't talking slanderously when we pointed out what my dad is like—and even though, thank God, he never sexually abused us, verbal and other non-sexual abuse is still abuse—and my now-ex stepmother seems to have seen that. Incidentally, I feel sorry for my dad at this point—he's repeated the "Hurt people hurt people" cycle, and his life choices have caught up to him.)